Theory-of-Mind Primitives
Model another person's preferences, beliefs, and constraints before acting
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 99%
Theory of mind is the ability to put yourself in another person's position and use that model to choose your own action. List operationalizes it through three primitives of decision making: preferences, beliefs, and constraints. First ask what the other person wants, what they think is true, and what limits their available choices. Then predict how each move you could make would change their response. Work backward from those likely responses to your best action. The framework applies to competitors reacting to a price change, a child disengaging from schoolwork, or a rider whose social norm rules out tipping. Its value comes from avoiding expenditure on actions that cannot overcome a binding constraint and from updating your strategy when observed behavior contradicts the model.
Origin
List presents the primitives as a practical way to develop theory of mind within his critical-thinking hierarchy.
Core principles
- 01Another person's choices follow their preferences, beliefs, and constraints
- 02Your best move depends partly on how the other person will respond
- 03A strong constraint can make persuasion spending wasteful
- 04Backward induction turns a behavioral model into an action
How to run it
- 1
Choose the actor
Identify whose response affects your result. Define the decision from that person's point of view rather than your own.
Pro tip Focus on one consequential actor before modeling a crowd.
Watch out Do not substitute a stereotype for an individual model.
- 2
Map preferences
Estimate which outcomes the person values and how they rank the tradeoffs. Use behavior and direct evidence where available.
Pro tip Distinguish what they want from what you want them to want.
Watch out Stated preferences may not predict actual choices.
- 3
Map beliefs
Identify what the person believes about the options, probabilities, and other actors. Their action follows their perceived world, even when a belief is inaccurate.
Pro tip Ask what information they possess that you do not.
Watch out Do not assume shared facts imply shared interpretation.
- 4
Map constraints
Find the financial, cognitive, social, legal, or practical limits that remove choices from the person's feasible set. Mark any constraint that your intervention cannot change.
Pro tip Look for a binding norm or resource limit before spending on persuasion.
Watch out Ignoring a hard constraint leads to wasted effort.
- 5
Backward induct
Predict the person's response to each action you could take, then choose the action with the best resulting outcome. Revise the primitives when reality differs from the prediction.
Pro tip Write the expected response beside each option.
Watch out A model is a hypothesis, not access to another person's mind.
In the wild
List describes a person who follows a social norm of never tipping. If that norm is a binding constraint, changing prompts or spending more money to induce a tip is unlikely to work. Modeling the constraint first prevents waste.
→ Resources can be directed toward people whose behavior is actually responsive.
Common mistakes
Projecting your own preferences
Assuming another actor values the same outcomes produces the wrong predicted response.
Ignoring binding constraints
No amount of optimization around a message will work if the recipient cannot or will not choose the target behavior.
Treating the model as certainty
Preferences, beliefs, and constraints are estimates that must change when observed actions contradict them.
Is it for you?
Best for
Negotiations, competitive moves, management decisions, and influence attempts where another person's reaction determines the outcome.
Not ideal for
Decisions that do not materially depend on another actor or where evidence about that actor is too weak to support a useful model.
From the transcript
“theory of mind means how well do you put yourself in the shoes of another person”
“try to figure out what are the preferences of that other person what are the beliefs of the other person and what are the constraints…”
“after you figure that out you then say well what's my optimal action given that the person operates in this way”
From the episode
#566: John List — A Master Economist on Strategic Quitting, How to Practice Theory of Mind, Learnings from Uber, Optimizations to Boost Donations, the Primitives of Decision-Making, and How Field Experiments Reveal Hidden Realities
John List